The sun had barely risen when Kalden followed Akari into the hunting room. Snow covered the backyard once again, and heavy flakes clung to the room’s tall glass windows.

Elend and Irina lounged on a leather sofa near the tree, and Relia sat across from them, wearing a pair of pink flannel pajamas.

Kalden wouldn’t be caught dead wearing pajamas in front of people, and the rest of the house seemed to share that sentiment. Well, except for Glim, who lounged in one of the mirrors, wearing a blue version of Relia’s outfit. But Glim changed her outfits several times per hour, so she didn’t count.

“Morning!” Relia sprang up from her seat and grabbed two cups of coffee from a nearby tray. She practically skipped across the room to meet them. “Happy Midwinter!”

“Morning,” Kalden replied as he sipped the offered mug. Relia had foamed the milk, and it tasted vaguely of nutmeg. He normally preferred black coffee, but this wasn’t bad at all.

Relia returned to her seat, and Kalden took in the massive evergreen tree in front of the glass window. He’d seen this before, of course. The Darklights had it delivered earlier in Hexember. But now, half a dozen gifts orbited the tree like planets around a star. Espirians had the strangest traditions. This particular one had started with a Mystic who’d flown through the sky on Midwinter Eve, dropping gifts for poor children in floating bags.

Kalden had lived in Espiria for the first half of his life, but his parents had kept their own traditions that whole time. In Shoken, families exchanged gifts on New Year’s Day rather than Midwinter. And more often than not, those gifts were envelopes of money. Not floating bags.

Akari gave him a look, and he thought he understood. Don’t broadcast your confusion, or Relia will make us watch Midwinter movies all night. He nodded seriously before following her to the sofa opposite the Darklights.

“Okay.” Relia headed over to the fireplace and retrieved two steel poles with hooks on the end. Each one was about six feet long, but they looked like they might extend even longer than that.

“You guys need to open yours at the same time.” Relia handed them each a pole, then she spun around and gestured toward the top of the tree. “They’re the small red bags on the right.”

Akari set her pole aside and stretched out a hand. She waited several heartbeats as the red bags orbited around to the left side of the tree, then a spacetime Missile cut through the air.

Clearly, she meant to teleport the gift straight into her hands rather than using the pole. Relia would probably complain about that, but she should have known better.

Akari’s Missile broke several inches from its target, turning to silver mist. “Seriously?” She rounded on Relia. “You warded the presents?”

“I told you.” The other girl sipped her coffee with a grin. “You’re getting way too predictable with those portals.”

Akari muttered curses under her breath as she grabbed her pole and stalked toward the tree. Kalden took his own pole and followed her lead.

Retrieving the gifts was a simple matter of hooking the bags by their ribbons and lowering them to the floor. The bags grew heavier as they stepped away from the tree. They also left trails of golden sparkles. Probably a dream Construct meant to entertain little kids.

They settled back onto their seats, and Kalden conjured a violet blade to slice through the ribbons. He’d half expected Relia to ward those with micro-Constructs, but they broke apart with ease. Akari’s ribbons broke just as quickly, and they opened their bags at the same time.

Kalden reached inside and withdrew two cylindrical pieces of fabric. They felt like polyester socks, except they had no bottoms. A more careful inspection revealed a small mana battery on the outside. Kalden relaxed into his Silver Sight and saw the green-gold aura of life mana. He looked on the inside and found various sigils, too advanced for him to read.

“I get it,” Akari said. “It’s a self-healing thing, right?” She’d always been better at reading sigils than him. All modern programming languages were based off sigilcraft, so there was plenty of overlap.

“Yep,” Relia replied. “I made these with Arturo. We call them embracers.”

They both looked at her.

She gestured to her forearms. “You know how old-school armor came in lots of small pieces? The forearm pieces were called bracers. These are kind of like that, but they give your legs a little hug.”

Actually, those forearm pieces were called vambraces. Bracers were something that surgeball players wore, but Kalden wasn’t about to ruin her pun.

“Oh well.” Relia let out a long sigh. “it was funnier when we had the idea.”

“I’m happy for you two,” Akari deadpanned. “But I feel bad for your kids. Are they gonna have clever names, too?”

Relia’s cheeks turned as red as her hair, and she muttered several excuses about how it would never work out.

Kalden rolled up his pant leg and pulled one of the embracers on. They were surprisingly comfortable—slim as a sock, and near weightless despite the life mana battery.

“I’m surprised Arturo agreed to this,” Kalden said as he adjusted the artifact. Their teammate had made his stance on life mana clear. Several times, in fact.

“It took some convincing.” Relia’s eyes turned more serious. “But I felt bad when I wasn’t there for you guys after the qualifying rounds. This is a way for me to heal you, even if we’re apart. I told Arturo that, and he seemed to get it.”

They thanked Relia, and Akari spent the next few minutes asking about the specifics. Apparently, these would heal basic cuts with ease. More serious injuries would deplete the mana, but it would stop the bleeding long enough for them to find real healers. The battery also lacked any aspect conversion functions, which meant Relia would need to refill it herself between uses. Anything else would have been too heavy for them to wear. Fortunately, this was hardly a problem when they all lived under one roof.

“Okay.” Akari handed Relia the steel rod. “Guess it’s your turn.”

Relia skipped over to the tree and retrieved her gift without any instructions. No surprise there; Akari might have wrapped this, but Relia had put everything around the tree.

As for Kalden, he hadn’t gotten Relia anything. The soulshine project had taken up most of his time, so they’d all agreed that would be his gift to her. What’s more, he was terrible at Midwinter shopping. Finding something for Akari had been stressful enough, and she was his girlfriend.

Relia cut the ribbons as if it were a race, then she held up a colorful box for all to see. It was a Shokenese board game called Dachi Saikoro, which translated to “Dice Town” in Espirian. They’d played a few games like this over the summer, and they usually involved collecting cards to build up your own city.

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“Thanks!” Relia said as she scanned the back of the box. “How’d you know I wanted this one?”

“I had some help.” Akari eyed Elend and Glim across the room. Help might be an understatement in this case. Kalden remembered her late night brainstorming sessions, and all her ideas had revolved around combat. She never would have guessed that her friend might want a distraction from all that training.

In all fairness, Kalden never would have guessed that, either.

“We can play later tonight,” Relia said.

“I’ll be the referee!” Glim said from the mirror. “Gotta make sure no one uses their battle mana.”

“Hey.” Kalden held up his hands. “I’ve never used my aspect during a board game.” It wasn’t his fault the designers filled the decks with overpowered card combinations. Or that he understood basic probability. Or that no one but Elend and Glim knew how to bluff.

Finally, Akari and Kalden grabbed their poles and retrieved their gifts from each other.

“I wonder what it is,” Akari said as she shook her own bag. The present meowed like a cat in distress, and her eyes widened in horror.

“It’s not a pet.” Kalden narrowed his eyes at Glim. At some point, the mana spirit had replaced her pajama top with an embroidered sweater of a kitten popping out of a box.

“Thank Talek.” Akari’s shoulders sagged with relief. “I’d probably overtrain the poor thing.”

“I don’t think you train kittens,” Relia spoke up.

“See? Shows how much I know.” Akari reached into the bag and pulled out a smaller box made of dark brown wood. “I hope this is something romantic . . .”

Kalden froze. “You’re joking." Did she actually expect that kind of gifts? She’d never hinted at that before. Then again, this was Akari Zeller.

“I don’t actually know what sort of gifts are romantic,” Kalden admitted.

Akari’s face broke into a sudden grin. “Me neither.”

“A romantic gift is something that comes from the heart,” Glim said. “Like blood!”

Kalden ignored the mana spirit this time. “Just open it,” he told Akari.

Akari opened the box on its hinges, revealing a black leather band, wide enough to fit around her wrist. Her face took on a curious expression as she picked it up and examined the inside.

“It’s for your mana watch,” Kalden explained quickly. “The sigils don’t do anything special. They just reinforce it.”

“Oh.” Akari glanced down at her old watch, which had a fake leather band and an LCD screen that showed her current mana count. She’d worn that thing every day since she’d bought it, and it was starting to show its wear.

Akari unclipped her current watch and attached it to the new band. “Thanks,” she said as she admired it. “This one’s way better.”

“How come you just replaced the band?” Relia asked Kalden. “Why not the whole thing?”

“She bought that watch back on Arkala,” he explained. “The day we hunted arkions in the tunnels beneath Elegan.” He let the rest go unsaid, but he’d seen Akari look at that watch countless times whenever things got hard. Almost as if it were a reminder of the Archipelago, and their promise to return.

“That was a good day,” Akari said with an air of nostalgia. “First time we ever fought side by side.”

Huh. Maybe that was a romantic gift, after all? He must have been right because Akari scooted closer and kissed him on the corner of his mouth.

“Okay.” She nodded down to the closed bag in Kalden’s lap. “Go for it.”

Kalden cut the ribbons, loosened the drawstrings, and found another bag inside the first. Well, this was less of a bag, and more of a pouch. Smooth brown leather covered the surface, along with a stainless steel buckle on the front, and a steel hook he could attach to his belt.

He’d seen people wear bags around Koreldon City, but this one was barely big enough to hold his wallet. He met Akari’s eyes, but she just bit her lip and grinned. Clearly, she expected him to figure this out himself.

It couldn’t be a pocket dimension, could it? Akari didn’t know how to build those yet, and they were too expensive for her to buy. Still, no harm in testing it. He pulled out his wallet and slid it into the pouch.

Nothing happened, and the pouch seemed as big as it looked on the outside.

Kalden tried feeding some pure mana into the pouch, but it didn’t respond. He tried again with his battle mana and got the same result. Next, he relaxed his vision and viewed the pouch in his Silver Sight. It shone with faint silver light. The batteries were probably woven into the leather, like what Arturo had done with the embracers.

“He won’t get it,” Elend said from across the room. Kalden almost took those words as a personal challenge, but the Grandmaster held out his hand. “Toss it here, lad.”

Kalden shrugged and tossed the pouch across the room. Elend caught it with his right hand. His other hand reached toward the floor lamp on his left. The entire lamp winked out of existence, including the plug.

“Retrieve the lamp,” Elend said as he tossed the pouch back. “Just don’t do it over someone’s head.”

“And you’ll need more mana than you think,” Irina added.

Kalden caught the pouch and pulled open the top flap. Again, it appeared as empty as before. There was definitely a pocket dimension here, but it was hidden somehow. What’s more, Elend had barely even touched the lamp or the pouch. That must be a displacement technique. But how did you activate it? A technique like that was far too complex to happen on its own.

Knowledge mana, of course.

Kalden focused on the lamp in his mind’s eye, then he cycled his battle mana from his soul, to his brain, and to the pouch itself. It accepted the mana this time, but nothing else happened.

Remembering Irina’s words, Kalden cycled pure mana into the bag. It drank greedily this time, and he fed it even more over the next few heartbeats. Pressure gathered in his opposite hand, and he held it over the floor where the lamp snapped back into existence.

“Wow,” Kalden said. The process had drained a fraction of his reserves, and he felt suddenly lightheaded. No surprise there, considering the techniques that powered this thing.

“And yes,” Elend said. “Before you ask, this can be used in combat. But you might need to grow into that.”

Actually, Kalden hadn’t planned to ask that. Not because he wasn’t curious, but because the answer was obvious. If you could teleport a half-ton boulder into your hand, then physics would handle the rest.

“And no,” Elend continued. “You won’t have enough mana to stick your opponents in the bag. There’s a lot of boring equations that explain why, and you can ask your girlfriend about them later.”

“Thank you,” Kalden said as he turned back to Akari. “This is amazing—way better than what I got you.” He still couldn’t imagine where she’d gotten the money, but she must have had help from the Darklights.

Akari waved his comment away. “You’re way easier to shop for than me.”

“It’s true,” Relia said. “Akari just buys whatever she wants, but you hate shopping.”

That much was certainly true. Kalden got overwhelmed with choices whenever he tried to buy something. He’d already proven that with Akari’s gift. It also didn’t help that he’d had personal shoppers and stylists back on Arkala. Before that, his parents had shopped for him.

“Alright.” Elend got to his feet and headed for the door. “Come with me, kids. We saved the least wholesome gift for last.”

What? Kalden exchanged a glance with Akari, but she looked equally confused.

Relia’s lips made a thin line. “Yeah, he’s not kidding.”

“You know what this is?” Akari asked.

She nodded. “I helped him make it.”

Kalden and the others followed him across the estate and down the stairs into the basement. They walked past the gym and alchemy labs until they reached the end of the hall. Elend slid open the wooden door to reveal a dojo, no bigger than a small office.

A metal cylinder dominated the center of the room, stretching all the way from the floor to the ceiling. The machine had an open front, and it looked big enough to encase a single person.

“This,” Elend said. “Is a pain simulator.”

Kalden blinked at the machine. “What? Why would we—”

“Artisan training,” Akari realized.

“Aye, lass. It turns out you don’t need true injuries to grow stronger.” Elend strolled over and pressed a hand to the machine. “Your soul takes orders from your brain, not your body. As long as your brain believes you’re in pain, your channels will grow and enforce your cells. Especially during your next advancement.”

She stared at the machine. “So . . . this won’t hurt as much as real broken bones?”

“Oh no,” Elend said. “This will feel exactly like real broken bones. That’s the point.”

“The pain will go away once you turn it off,” Relia said as she stepped up beside them. “But I won’t have to heal you, and there’s no risk of long-term damage.”

Elend nodded. “There are no controls, so you’ll need Glim to help you operate it. She’ll determine what’s safe for you to handle, and for how long.”

Relia still looked worried, and Kalden recalled what she’d said upstairs. Anxiety surged through him as the pieces fell into place. “This isn’t just for Artisan training, is it?”

A smile crossed the Grandmaster’s face. “Until now, every Aeon ritual has failed in some way. Including your brother’s. No one’s ever trained hard enough to endure the Etherite, but we’ve finally cracked the secret.”

He gestured to Relia. “Krustoplegia is painful, even deadly. But it prepares Mana Artists to receive Aeon souls.” He turned back to Kalden and Akari. “You two are going to feel what she feels—every day until you advance. Do this, and you’ll have stronger Artisan bodies than anyone. Even me.”